Speaking in Tongues

Yeah, November, I know. Work has kept me quite busy for the last, what...three months? I am so ready for vacation! A whole week to lesson plan be a vegetable and chill at Mom and Dad's. I haven't seen them since the very beginning of August, so it will be really wonderful.

Now, what remains of the post will be a random mishmash of the last few weeks of my life!

Went to Little Rock on the 4th to attend a conference for Arkansas art educators. It was made of awesome. I got quite a few ideas for lessons and other assorted stuff, but the most exciting thing was the session about the Crystal Bridges museum of American art (I'm not sure what the full title really is, although this might be it). It's in Bentonville and should be opening to the public within the next few years, thought no opening date has been announced. This museum is really geared towards teachers and their students and looks absolutely amazing. You should check it out.

I spent a large chunk of my weekend battling my stubborn, stubborn window frames to hang 16 curtains on my 8 bedroom windows. The result looks very nice though, especially with my new coverlet, and my room is now simply slightly chilly versus intolerably cold. Yay! Due to the kind of curtain rod I had to get, as well as the number of curtains, It's not going to be possible to move the whole curtain back for light, so I'm crocheting 8 curtain ties. The color yarn I happened to have even matches the coverlet, which is awesome. The coverlet is this kind of rusty orange spice color, and the curtains are chocolate. I'm probably gonna get a couple brightly colored prints too, to help brighten the room up now that most of the window area will be covered.,

Today was a pretty good day.  My classes went smoothly (even kindergarten), and Jocelyn and I are gonna put on a game night thing with our friends tonight.  Very nice.  I really am looking forward to the weekend though.  This week has been rough.  I've got to get a bunch done (like putting my drying racks together), but right now I'm being lazy.  That's what I need to do this weekend.  Get stuff done.

On another note, for anyone who's interested, I started a teaching blog today.  It chronicles all the happenings in my classroom, lesson plans, et cetera.  You can find that here.

Don't have a lot to say today, so peace out for now!

First of all, I hope everyone had a lovely Labor Day weekend!  I didn't go anywhere special or really do anything I wouldn't do on any other weekend, but it was still fun and -- more importantly -- very relaxing.  Mostly I hung out with Michael.  We went to Monticello to watch Inglorious Basterds on Saturday.  It was okay.  Unecessarily gory, as expected of a Quentin Tarantino flick, and in truth, kind of boring.  After that we decided to ride bikes at the park, which was lots of fun, even though the seat bruised me.  A lot of my remaining time this weekend was spent doing absolutely nothing.  It was GLORIOUS.

But, as all things must, the weekend has come to an end.  Today was spent feeling rather tired and wishing we'd had four days off instead of three, but went fairly well.  My 1st and 3rd graders did pretty good, actually, as did my first Kindergarten class.  But the last class of the day was...vexing, to say the least. 

By the end, I had been reduced to shouting ineffectually followed by getting them in their seats and scolding them (another thing that, while seeming to engender remorse within the children, will be forgotten by the next time they have class).  I was so frustrated by myself and by the class that I could honestly have sat down and cried right there.  Even now, hours later, I can think back on the class and feel my throat start to burn.  I am still upset enough to cry.

It's so hard to handle a class like that.  How do I do it?  What do I do?  I want to have fun with them and have a productive class, but their behavior doesn't allow for that.  And getting angry (which happens no matter how much I swear I will avoid) never produces any positive results.  I know it, but I can't seem to change things.  When I got home and got settled, I began reading even more ardently my Love & Logic book.  I want to be a Love & Logic teacher.  I feel that it will work; I feel like it will make both me and my students happy.  

So starting tomorrow, I'm going to try to apply Love& Logic to all my classes.  And maybe, by the time next Tuesday rolls around, I will be ready for that last class of the day.  And maybe, we will be able to have a good time.  Maybe I will not leave school feeling depressed, head-achey, and near tears.  Maybe I will leave feeling accomplished, with a smile on my face.  That is my goal.

Finally, I have remembered to get loaf pans!  That's right, I can now bake bread and life is wonderful.  Today will be a good day for it as well, so I'm feeling pleased.  I'm gonna make potato soup to go with it for dinner.

School has been going fine.  I'm still feeling kind of stressed about the kindergartners, but what can I do, eh?  I also need to figure out what I'm going to be doing with the two classes I have twice a week.  They will get ahead of all the others, so I need to start them on some more detailed lessons.  I'm thinking that maybe I'll start them out on line stuff.  I'm not sure.  I need to check some ideas out.  Gah.  I'm also going to need to start putting the tree up in the hallway so that I can start hanging kids' leaves up out there.  Maybe after school tomorrow I'll go back to Anderson and do that.  

My my, it has been an awful long time since I last blogged, hasn't it?  I can only blame the hectic pace that real life has been traveling at.  (Me, procrastinate? Nooo!)

To sum it all up, I have spent the last month moving to Crossett, AR in preparation to begin my new job as an elementary art teacher.  For those of you who don't know, Crossett is a forested town of about 6,000 people located some 40 minutes east of El Dorado.  For a small town in the middle of nowhere, I rather like it.

I am renting a house with the other art teacher at my school, Jocelyn.  We got a 3 bedroom house (so that one room could be the studio), but no appliances, which thankfully we now have (not to mention the gas was finally turned on, so hot water yay!).  The place is spacious but rather run down.  It has a lot of charm (I can't really pinpoint the time period, but I'd hazard the 40s).  At some point I will have to post pictures.  The first week or so (starting at the 1st of the month, wow) was mainly spent getting moved in and cleaning the place up, which is a work in progress at the moment.

This past week has been spent doing inservice at school.  I got to meet and greet with all the new teachers in the district (something like 20 if I remember correctly) and there are a few from UCA and one lady who graduated from John Brown University in my hometown.  I even met Lauren Bolinger's great aunt, who is a new teacher.  Talk about a small world!  It's been great getting all settled in and getting to know new people.   In particular, two fellow teachers, Tasha and Michael, have become friends.  It's been great.

In other news, I just had a WONDERFUL night.  And that's all yer getting for right now.

More information will be forthcoming, I promise!  No more 3 week waits, although school starts next week, so I certainly won't be updating before then!  Up to my eyeballs in prep...

I've been trying to sleep now for something like a half an hour, but my mind is whirling with thoughts and ideas.  Today was mostly spent on the perusal of several very lovely edublogs which I have newly discovered.  It's wonderful and inspiring to be able to so easily read the experiences, thoughts, and ideas of other educators, of art and other subjects.

This of course, got me thinking about a conversation I had with my mentor teacher towards the end of my internship.  One of my standing assignments was the completion of a sort of journal detailing my experiences, both failures and triumphs, throughout the course of the semester.  I was to records my feelings and opinions if I so wished; it was a tool of reflection meant to facilitate growth within myself of an educator.  The part of this conversation which sticks out most in my mind was that my mentor wished that she had the same opportunity to practice reflection.  We were both enthused by the way writing such journal entries did allow for me to grow as an educator, to see what things worked best and what could use improvement and/or change.

Having just recently discovered the world of edublogs, I think that the seeds of my idea were planted; it is only recently, with my exploration of these blogs, that it has taken root and begun to grow.  For me, as a person who regularly blogs and uses apps like Facebook, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to include another blog, especially to write about something that is going to be such a large and important aspect of my life, something that I love to do.  I'll be able to continue reflecting on my teacher (and being a reflective educator is important to being an effective educator, in my mind) with what I hope is very little adjustment.  In some ways, I also hope that somewhere there will be fellow first year teachers who get something out of my blogging efforts (and maybe others who can offer some advice).

I don't know that I would start this thing right at the get-go (because I'll have a lot on my plate as is), but in a couple of months?  I think it's possible.  I know that I want to try.

So this day working, day not stuff is strange now.  Having only 15 hours means that it is harder for me to go to work than it was when I had closer to 30.  Strange psychology stuff!  It's a day off today.  I've got to go to the dry cleaners around three to get some clothes pinned for alterations and go buy bread.  I guess I should clean the kitchen.  And call Jocelyn.  I should do that too.

Laaaazy.

Well I'm just procrastinating now.  I should really finish this area I'm working on (the team has been waiting for this one for months by now--not all my fault, I promise).  It will take me very little time.  Still....

Things are moving right along.  I've got a fair chunk of change saved up, and I will have no problems making rent before I start the teaching job.  The other art teacher, Jocelyn, has asked me to move in with her.  The plan is to have a 3 bedroom place so that we can convert one room into a studio, which is an excellent plan.  We have found (or rather, been directed to) a place that fits the bill, and we're gonna go for it sight unseen, because the rent and everything is totally cheap and made of awesome.  We'll have to get a few appliances, but that shouldn't be a big deal.  Jocelyn already found a washer/dryer set for $150, so now we just need a stove and a fridge.  Woot!

I'm really looking forward to getting down there at the end of the month.  It's gonna be great.  And the first thing I'm gonna do is buy a bed.  Sam's Club sells incredibly comfortable Serta mattresses for a good price, so that's where I'll go!  Hopefully Jocelyn knows someone with a truck....

On another, completely different note, I remembered I have a Twitter today.  I may start up with that, but who knows with me.  I'm not the most punctual of updaters on anything.

So a couple weeks ago, my parents and I went and saw the new Star Trek movie (which was totally awesome, btw, and love to all those GQMF making up the cast).  My mom was commenting about how interesting a twist it was that Spock and Uhura were in a relationship, like it came out of left field.  I've never seen TOS, so I was just kinda like, yeah okay.

Well, I just started watching TOS (you can watch the whole show for free on youtube, apparently).  The very first episode, and what do I see?  The most BLATANT flirting EVAR from Uhura directed towards Spock.  In a totally 60s fashion, of course.  It was hilarious.

Anyway, enough of my geekiness.  Have to work today.  Totally don't wanna, but then, who does?

So I was on my deviantArt cause, hey, yesterday was my birthday and it's time to post my new deviantID (of which I am very proud, btw).  I also checked my messages, and there was one comment for my teaset that said "featured here". 

It linked to this site.

I've never heard of the blog or forum before, but they look pretty cool.  It's for graphic design/art/et cetera and seems pretty awesome.  They have lots of great stuff featured on the blog like daily art features, tutorials, artists, etc.  Check it out!

.......

On another note, I made two new icons!

  Feel free to use if you want, just credit me with its creation.


This one too!

Both are little drawing from a thank you card I made for my aunt.  They were done with pen and colored pencil.

I've been home from college for about a week now, and I finally couldn't handle it anymore.  The main bathroom of our house is utterly disgusting.  So, I decided to clean like a madwoman.

After sweeping the floor (the pile of dirt was like a miniature mountain) and running around the house gathering various cleaning supplies, I decided to tackle the worst of the lot: the dread bathtub/shower stall.  My mom has this cleaning spray called Kaboom, which is pretty good stuff.  I turned on the fan and after scrubbing the tub itself with Comet, sprayed down the tile walls and the glass doors with the stuff.  Now, our tile in that stall seems like it hasn't been scrubbed since the dawn of time.  There is hard water build up, mold, and a surfeit of soap scum.  Gross.  I let things soak for a bit and then stepped in to do battle, me and my scrubby sponge against the hordes of darkness...or at least, some super tough buildup.  It took forever to scrub down half, yes half, of the stall, and it left my shoulder acting up and my wrist sore.

I figured, hey, I'll let it sit for a while, have some dinner, goof off a bit.  So I did, and then I finished scrubbing the rest of the tile.  At this point I thought I ought to start on the glass doors next.  About halfway through that, I had to stop and spray cleaner again, because that scum was tough to get off.  And again, I took a break, which just let me notice that, hey, I feel sorta like I do when I've had one too many drinks, except I'm still pretty lucid.  My head felt stuffed full of wool (especially around my sinuses) and my lips were numb and tingly.  Once I really stopped exerting myself, my body decided that lethargy was the way to go.  That Kaboom spray, despite the fan, gave me a pain in the ass good ole contact high.  Great.  Like I really need to kill off my braincells. Yay!  Poison!

I decided to just leave it until today.  The doors are the last hard part, and I won't be needing anymore of that cleaning spray, so no more poison for me!

Okay, so you know how you get when you're totally wasted and happy about it, or when you get the really great painkillers at the hospital?  Some authors could not have been anywhere close to sober when they took the pen to the page.  I know the romance genre (particularly those Harlequin romance novels your mom denies ever reading) is often seen as the bottom of the barrel in the literary world.  And there is some BAD writing out there.  But this really takes the cake. 

Oh Lord have mercy. Aside from having actually been written, I can hardly fathom the fact that this little...gem was actually published, much less twice.  On the other hand, the responses by other denizens of lj is hilarious, most especially the fanart for "Our Lady of the Metaphors".

I'm on my way to Minneapolis in the morning for the NAEA conference this weekend.  It's gonna be very fun, and hopefully with as interesting a selection of keynote speakers as last year (although, it might be hard to beat the local artists from New Orleans talking about how the hurricane effected their work.  ;P ).  There are a lot of nice museums and such there, and I'm looking forward to hitting a few sessions and then acting like a tourist.  I'd kind of like to ride that roller coaster I've heard is in the Mall of America.  ^_________^

But I've got to go to bed now.  I have to get up at 4am.  I'll update upon my return, as I won't have computer access.

So all my ceramic pieces made it out of the glaze firings okay.  They look pretty good, actually.  I'll have to get pictures soon and post them on my deviantart account.  I only have to do a few touch up type things, like pc-11 and paint some small sections and grind off some of the kiln wash on the bottom of a few.  My panel review is Friday morning, but I think I will be more than ready for it.

In other news, I got a call from Crossett today.  It's not all quite set in stone yet, but it seems I've got a job.  *does a happy dance*  Very exciting!

Well, as I mentioned in the last post, I went to a job interview in Crossett today.  (This involved about 6 hours of driving, mostly in the rain--I now hate driving in the rain.  It gets me super nervous.  Ya'll should know why.)  I really liked the town and the surrounding area, from what I saw driving around and killing time.  It seems like a very lovely little town.  (The public library totally rocks too.  It's small, but brand new and awesome.)

The school is K-4 with about 570 students, and I would be 1 of 3 teachers, one of whom only teaches part time there--the rest is spent at the junior high.  When I arrived at the office, the principle was still interviewing a candidate for a different position.  So I waited, and of course, I got to witness the arrival of two students from class: one who projectile vomited and one who was the unlucky bystander.  I got asked by one of the secretaries, "Now, are you SURE?"  lol.  Yup.  Even with the threat of projectile vomiting students, I wanna teach.

I really liked the administrators (in this case the principle and the dean of students) and the other art teachers.  The school was nice.  There were quite a few things I liked quite a bit, such as the fact that they provide all 60 hours of professional development in-house and the enrichment activities every afternoon.  Teachers get to pick something they'd like to teach but couldn't in regular class hours and then have the same group of students every afternoon instead of once a week for that class.  Students are placed where they need it most, be it reading, math, or art, and it's a fun way to handle remediation and enrichment.  It sounds very cool. 

At any rate, my interview was conducted a bit informally so that I "wouldn't feel like I was in the hot seat".   I think it went very well. They told me that they were very interested, so I'm crossing my fingers.

On the other hand, what if I'm jumping the gun?  I feel really good about it (this being the feeling I got when I decided to pursue teaching and attend UCA, which has worked out like a dream so far), and my instincts about these things are usually pretty good.  But still--I haven't applied anywhere.  I didn't even apply here; they called me asking if I would be interested.  Awesome, but not a place I had looked at. 

If I accept this job having looked at no others, will I be gyping myself?  Or should I simply go with my instincts?  I do really like the area.  Monticello (which has a branch of the UofA) and Hamburg both seemed nice when I drove through.  El Dorado is about 40 miles and provides some bigger city type stuff.  (That's about the distance from Siloam to Rogers, so not really that bad.)  I like that it's only 9 miles from Louisiana and 50 miles from the University of Louisiana in Monroe (for some even bigger city type stuff).  Which would be awesome for pursuing a master's degree later.

I don't know.  I guess I should at least send some applications to other schools, even if they may not have an opening.  I should just try for areas I like, like NWAR and the Boston Mtns.  or around Conway.  Who knows?

I'm coming into the home stretch for ceramics.  I have until the end of March to get things finished up and ready for the BA/BFA faculty panel to assess. 

I've been working like a mad-woman (not that I wasn't already) because about two weeks ago, I showed Liz (my professor) the carved saucer I made.  She went gaga and declared that I should do ALL my work carved and why wasn't I?  So I was like, okay. Sure.  I like doing it, and if Liz thinks it's awesome the panel probably will too. Liz is hard to impress.  ^_-

Now, the average sculptural vessel takes me--after throwing and trimming--about 4-6 hours to complete.  I have to carve the design into the surface (I'm doing vines.  There's a picture ( here. ))  So, I can usually average one per night barring unfortunate circumstance (like the plate that crumbled into like five million pieces last night omfgkillmeee...).  And then I have to glaze them and I don't even know how that's gonna turn out yet.  At any rate, it's gonna take a lot of time and effort to get all the pieces I want done in time for the panel.

In other news, I totally have job interview on Friday!  I'm super excited.  I didn't even apply to this school (they were at the Teacher's Fair in February and had my resume).  It's in Crossett, which is about 3 1/2 hours from Conway in SW Arkansas.  The area seems nice, but we'll see how it goes.  I have to get offered the job before I need to worry about whether I'd like to live there or not.

I have survived my third week of the semester.  It feels longer, probably because this wonderful combo of full time days at the school and time at the studio are conspiring to kick my butt. 

This week was crazy.  I taught a lot more of the classes because my mentor teacher has three days of Pathwise training next week (Monday-Friday) and I will be teaching all the classes those days with a sub in the background for some backup.  I hear she is a veteran teacher who couldn't stay away after retiring though, so that's cool.  I also worked pretty hard to get 8 pieces thrown (and some test tiles) and ready for the bisque firing Stephanie and I are doing this weekend.

And by the way, I have either a glaze firing or a bisque firing every weekend until mid-March.  Also, I have to rush home next weekend (right after my glaze fire) so that Dad can change the break pads in my car.  Yay.


Sooo, I got all the pieces done, but it was tough work.  I'm feeling rather good about them, all the same.  To top this all off, of course, I'm also sick.  Joy!  The worst of it is probaby my lethargy (aka general feeling of ick) and the sore throat and voice that is seriously threatening to vacate the premesis.  I'm just glad that my body had the decency to wait until the weekend.  Hopefully the voice will be fine come monday because, seriously?  Soooo don't want to have my first all day solo teaching experience when I can't properly yell at troublemakers.  and there WILL be some. 

Honestly, I probably invited this on myself.  The first week and a half I was getting an average of maybe 4 hours of sleep, still getting used to the hectic pace and exercising with shynnah, not eating so great (still working on that one)--I'm totally not surprised if my immune system got run down like the rest of me.  Yay for burnout.  I'm going to get decent sleep, eat good food and drink oj and water, and have vitamins so that hopefully most of this will get gone by the start of the work week.

On another note, we went and saw Coraline last night (ya know, when it was just a sore throat and not "I want to crawl into bed and never leave" misery).  OMGWTF! o.O  Best, most creepifying (and yeah, I've watched to much Firefly) Tim Burton movie EVAR.  Creepy = <3  So freaking good.  And creepy.  Also, I kinda can't believe it's only PG, not PG-13.  Especially after that scene with teh old ladies, the sparkly pasties and a song involving swimmin' with bow-legged women.  Yeah.  Seriously.

Well, as you guys may or may not know, I've started my student teaching.  This week was my first real week of doing stuff other than observing, except it got kinda interrupted by sleet.  Or the threat of it I guess.  Unlike most of the state, particularly up Fayetteville way, we had a small amount of freezing rain, lots of just plain cold rain, and a whole lot of nothing else.  All the same, they let school out early in Perryville on Monday and canceled the following two days.  Sooo....snow days!  Tomorrow will hopefully NOT be canceled, and I will be teaching all the classes while being supervised.  Aaagh.  Kinda scary.  But it should be fine.

...I totally loved that book when I was a kid.  Anywho...

The start of the new semester.  Good lord.  I started my mandatory Internship II meetings yesterday at 8 in the morning.  They generally run until about 4 (though today and tomorrow I have a 2 1/2 hour lunch break, yeah!), and are so incredibly dull I feel as though I'm going to ooze from my chair and onto the floor.  Seriously.  Watching paint dry would be more fun.  (Especially if the fumes start getting to you and you either get high or pass out for a legitimate reason beyond "I'm incredibly bored.  I'm so bored this is going to kill me.")    It's not ALL bad, but a lot of it is common sense and the presentations are, for the most part, rather dry.

Tomorrow is the last one, so on Monday I will start my internship -- with an inservice day at that.  I'll be doing my internship at Perryville Elementary, which is a small town about 25 minutes west of Conway.  It's not a bad drive.   My mentor teacher is pretty cool, as are the principal and vice principal.  I think it will go well.

Ahahahahaha!






I could survive for 1 minute, 13 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Oh yeah.